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Aruba Networks, Inc.: Aruba Networks' 802.11N Wi-Fi Solution Scores Best in Class With Norwood School

^{Published on 2009-03-24 23:03:15, Last Modified on 2009-11-03 18:40:51 - Market Wire}
 

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - March 25, 2009) - Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: [ ARUN ]), a global leader in wireless LANs and secure mobility solutions, today announced that the Norwood School in Bethesda, Maryland has deployed Aruba's 802.11n Wi-Fi network across its 40-acre campus. The new system supports real-time video broadcasts to networked projectors, very densely deployed tablet computers, and parallel secure and guest access networks. The school's aging Cisco Fat AP network required extensive manual channel and signal strength planning. That system was replaced one year ago with a single-channel network that proved unable to handle the projector broadcasts and was subsequently abandoned. After conducting comparisons with multiple wireless LAN solutions, Norwood selected Aruba based on its best-in-class performance.

Each classroom at Norwood is equipped with a networked projector that is accessed wirelessly by teachers via 802.11n tablet PCs. The 802.11n Wi-Fi network also delivers Internet access to students and guests. Aruba's stateful, ICSA-certified policy-enforcement firewall is used to partition guest access by strictly policing what resources visitors are allowed to access and how much bandwidth they consume.

"Norwood is committed to educational innovation, and our technology program plays a central role in that goal," said David Rossell, Norwood's Administrator of Network Services and Planning. "Arguably the most important part of our technical system is the wireless network. For these initiatives to be effective, the Wi-Fi network must support our bandwidth-intensive projector and file system use and work with densely-deployed clients in classrooms. And it has to work flawlessly all the time every time. What impressed us most about Aruba's system is that it just worked out of the box. We spent almost a year trying to make a competitor's deployment work in our environment, only to see the network fail again and again when traffic spiked at the beginning of class periods. Aruba's network handled the load effortlessly."

Aruba's Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) technology lowers Wi-Fi deployment and maintenance costs by automating site surveys and using infrastructure-based controls to optimize the performance of Wi-Fi clients in real-time. Acting on their own, Wi-Fi clients do not always work cooperatively with other clients, or select the optimal band, channel, and access point. These issues are exacerbated in situations with high-bandwidth application and densely-packed clients. ARM controls how Wi-Fi clients interact, helping to ensure that 802.11n data, voice, and video applications have sufficient network resources to operate properly.

Tests conducted at the University of Washington showed that ARM increased 802.11n throughput by more than 200%, and enabled more than 100 laptops to reliably display multi-media lectures delivered from a single access point -- all without new software or infrastructure changes.

Additional information on Aruba's line of 802.11n access points can be found on-line at [ http://www.arubanetworks.com/products/access-points/ap-120family.php ]. A free Farpoint Group white paper on ARM titled Advances In Wireless Infrastructure Control can be downloaded from Aruba's Web site at [ www.arubanetworks.com/arm2.0 ].

About Aruba Networks

People move. Networks must follow. Aruba securely delivers networks to users, wherever they work or roam. Our mobility solutions enable the Follow-Me Enterprise that moves in lock-step with users:

 -- Adaptive 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi networks optimize themselves to ensure that users are always within reach of mission-critical information; -- Identity-based security assigns access policies to users, enforcing those policies whenever and wherever a network is accessed; -- Remote networking solutions ensure uninterrupted access to applications as users move; -- Multi-vendor network management provides a single point of control while managing both legacy and new wireless networks from Aruba and its competitors. 

The cost, convenience, and security benefits of our secure mobility solutions are fundamentally changing how and where we work. Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000® Index, Aruba is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions. To learn more, visit Aruba at [ http://www.arubanetworks.com ].

© 2009 Aruba Networks, Inc. AirWave®, Aruba Networks®, Aruba Mobility Management System®, Bluescanner, For Wireless That Works®, Mobile Edge Architecture, People Move. Networks Must Follow., The All-Wireless Workplace Is Now Open For Business, RFprotect, Green Island, and The Mobile Edge Company® are trademarks of Aruba Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.